wikialityfandomcom-20200214-history
Wikiality talk:Admin Board
This page is meant for Admins to discuss Policy and other issues. Please check Wikiality:Admin Board at the bottom for current projects, and add your own ideas, too. * * Discuss Blocks * * Archive New Comment ZOMFG! (yes, it was required as a heading). Maybe you all already know this, but I didn't: Jimmy Wales is going to be on The Report on the 24th!!! Wikipedia v. Wikiality? Ohhh, I can't wait! We have to do something to celebrate. Pajama party! Okay, maybe just for me. And yes, I am aware that I should be at least this excited about next week's Howard Dean/Tom Delay double show down, but... Pajama Party!!!--thisniss 03:00, 13 May 2007 (UTC) Google rankings, etc. Do you realize that we are the #4 Google link for "The Greatest President Ever"? Zoinks. --El Payo 04:57, 12 May 2007 (UTC) :That is the funniest thing ever. After actually working to make google ranks here and elsewhere (for example, despite my best efforts to raise Mitch McConnell to this glory, W. continues to rank as Google's favorite "coal whore"), of all the things to achieve accidentally! Wow. high-larious. :On another count, the Wikiality.com does well on several of the expected searches (I just noticed tonight that Comedy Central is paying for a Google "wikiality" link!) but I'm wondering about our lack of rank on "Stephen Colbert - you don't get to us till page 3. I'm thinking it might have something to do with our clear preference for through Our Glorious Stephen rather than directly to our Stephen Colbert page. This makes me wonder if perhaps we should flip these pages so the redirect works in the opposite direction, to help the google rankings on Stephen search? I doubt too many people are searching on "Our Glorious Stephen", but I suspect we would continue to do well there even if we flipped it.--thisniss 05:31, 12 May 2007 (UTC) ::I think you make a great point. I didn't realize that pages were linking through that page. Maybe we should have an edit orgy and undo the self-inflicted damage? --El Payo 05:43, 12 May 2007 (UTC) :::Well, I was suggesting the lazier way and saying we could just flip them. Make "Our Glorious Stephen" the wikiality/stephen_colbert page (with a "move page") and make the Stephen Colbert link a redirect - it would be fewer pages to undo! But one way or another, I do think this has something to do with our google rank (or lack of) on Stephen searches. There's probably an easier remedy, though, than either one of these. Oh, maybe "wikiality/stephen_colbert/our_glorious_stephen" - I'm going to try that now!--thisniss 05:52, 12 May 2007 (UTC) ::::We should definitely not change the Stephen Colbert page to a redirect. The Google works in mysterious ways, but I suspect that they are not reading our internal linkages. --MC Esteban™ 06:34, 12 May 2007 (UTC) No, what I did was this: Stephen Colbert/Our Glorious Stephen. I made Our Glorious Stephen redirect to that. The definition needs to be filled out, but I figured we could also collect all our "pet names" there, so that the redirects are sort of "doubly redirecting." The way this page is made now, the url has both "Stephen Colbert" and "Our Glorious Stephen" built in, which is good, I think. I could be wrong, but we'll see. As far as the google reading our internal links, I think it does matter if we're directing around pages - that's why we ranked very high for the first couple of days of the "Greatest Living American" google bomb, but fell as more and more people linked to CN. But hopefully this will fix some of it. I also changed the link in the "hello" template to link directly to the Stephen page - that's probably half of the redirect links right there. Anyway, you are right, it is something of a mystery. And you're also right that we shouldn't redirect Stephen. I was just trying to figure out what to do about the fact that "Stephen Colbert" was 23rd on our "Most linked to" list, while "Our Glorious Stephen" was 4th. (without having to change thousands of links by hand, yipes!).--thisniss 07:42, 12 May 2007 (UTC) :I think The Googles possibly weighs in how many times words or a phrase are mentioned on a website, but this is probably not given much weight overall in their algorithm, or else people would just spam whatever search terms they want all over their page. The reason we fell in the rankings for Greatest Living American was because more popular, so-called quality, sites began listing the term. If they, in turn, got linked to from other sites, then they would be bumped up the list, as that is probably the most important thing when it comes to Google page rankings: ::"PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important." ::"Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don't match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of the page's content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it's a good match for your query." :What we really need are a number of seperate pages linking, or "voting", for us with the terms Stephen Colbert. In other words, we need to be more popular. This is also why a digg page boosts us up a ton, because it is considered a "vote" from a super high-quality site. Wikipedia would probably help too, if only those wikinazis would let us link here! --MC Esteban™ 14:36, 12 May 2007 (UTC) ::Yes, the linking stuff is obviously true, but it matters to some degree how much/whether we're "directly" using the name/term "Stephen Colbert," that's alls I was saying. Not from page 3 to page 1 matters, but matters. Otherwise, it wouldn't have mattered when we added "Truthiness" to our name, etc. Popularity and the number of inter-interwebs links clearly makes much more of a difference than this, but I was just saying that this is a piece that we can try to control for in the immediate. ::Anyway, another important point you raised reminded me of something I've been meaning to ask for a while, which is that we encourage people to use Digg, StumbledUpon, Facebook, Del.icio.us, Technorati (now that we have the Humor Blog), etc. to note what we're doing here. These kinds of linkages carry more and more weight for rankings, but they're also just a good way to get the word out. I try to "Digg" (et. al.) all our new Featured Articles (though sometimes I forget), and anything that's "newsy" - like the google bomb stuff, etc. Most of the time, these stories don't get "picked up" in a huge way, but occasionally one or two of them have, and it always helps us. Plus, if I'm not the only one doing it, there's a better chance that someone else will write a "blurb" that catches people's attention. :) If anyone here has any "Digg cred", it would be a huge act of generosity to pick one or two of your favorite pages and Digg them. (I have no "Digg cred," because the only things I ever digg are wiki related, of course).--thisniss 17:35, 12 May 2007 (UTC) Blog Update I made a page for us to talk about the blog, keep track of what's been posted (so we don't have to continually sort through the blog archive), etc. Main blog page here: Wikiality:Wikia Blog Posts, talk page: Wikiality talk:Wikia Blog Posts. The blog itself is now up and running, here: Wikia Humor Blog. We've got the first two posts; I don't know when the other wikis jump on. Please join the conversation about the blog at the blog talk page!--thisniss 02:21, 12 May 2007 (UTC) Our Wikia Listing How do you all feel about our being listed on Wikia's main page as "Truthiness" rather than "Wikiality"? I believe there were good reasons for this in the past... just wondering if there is still a preference for "Truthiness" or if "Wikiality" might be better now, etc. Straw poll? --thisniss 02:27, 10 May 2007 (UTC) New Wikia "Blog" Feature Wikia has started a new "blog" feature. I am not exactly sure how it works, but Angela will send a note along on how it should be used. It is linked through Mediawiki, so only admins will be able to use it to highlight our very best stuff on a blog of some sort. Please see this page again for more info.--WatchTVEatDonutDrinkBeer 20:48, 8 May 2007 (UTC) :Angela has posted an explanation of the new feature here--WatchTVEatDonutDrinkBeer 20:54, 8 May 2007 (UTC) ::The "humor" blog (ours) seems to be down right now, though. But this will be cool when it gets going! I've also been wondering about posting occassional links at the Comedy Central blog (when we have something especially relevant or awesome). I'll have to read theirs more to see if it's a good fit, but maybe others here have looked at it and have better info? There's also a new Daily Show blog (I found it through the always wonderful No Fact Zone) that seems pretty good, and I thought we might get in touch with them about news, cross-postings, etc. --thisniss 21:10, 8 May 2007 (UTC) :I want to offer some suggestions for what should go on the blog: * new games * DYK's * Featured Word or Article --WatchTVEatDonutDrinkBeer 22:34, 9 May 2007 (UTC) ::Yes, I second these suggestions. I would also add ::*particularly good "Breaking News" stories, Captions, etc. (we can post pics, based on what I've seen on the other Wikia blogs) ::*we can use the "title line" to highlight particular achievements, along the lines of "Here's our 6500th article" or "We're celebrating our First Anniversary this week with a retrospective of our favorite Featured Articles..." ::*"old Features"/Truthie winners (since the above made me remember them) ::We want to put our very best stuff on the blog, obviously. And since we get to put something up everyday, I feel that it's okay to revisit "old stuff," especially if we ever find that we're facing the choice between better "old" material and mediocre "new" material. Just my personal opinion, though, and hopefully this will not be much of an issue!--thisniss 01:52, 10 May 2007 (UTC) Features of the Month I started a page for displaying winners and voting for "Features" of the month: Wikiality:Features of the Month. Currently we have 4 articles that were featured during the month of April, 2007, the last of which is still on the front page. I believe in order to be fair, we should wait for it to be "retired" before voting for "April Features". Does anyone have any suggestions/improvements/comments?--WatchTVEatDonutDrinkBeer 23:25, 6 May 2007 (UTC) Googling I made an astonishing discovery! Google images for "esteban colberto" Hurray! (BTW, I was looking for an image for Cinco de Mayo for the front page)--WatchTVEatDonutDrinkBeer 02:56, 5 May 2007 (UTC) Bloggers Being Infiltrated! Amazing. Okay, which of you is working for the NSA?--WatchTVEatDonutDrinkBeer 19:03, 30 April 2007 (UTC) :Not me. Though I did learn from this site that I was correct about E. Howard Hunt: he most likely did not kill JFK. Nice to know that once again Wikiality.com trumps Wikip*dia in truthiness (as the history of their Hunt page reveals an obvious bias against those who post "inaccurate, incomplete, or untrue information.") Not that these two stories are related, because they aren't. Alls I'm sayin' is, when the NSA comes for you, make sure you've documented the "significance" of your claims with the proper authorities. <*snark*> --thisniss 19:50, 30 April 2007 (UTC) :Honestly, one of my best friends works for the NSA. --uno 04:22, 2 May 2007 (UTC) Non-Sysops with Rollback Superpowers The newest version of wiki allows for us to give "roll back rights" to users who are not sysops. These rights have been extended to the following "Truthiness Protectors": # Careax # Colberican # Alethic Logic # OHeL # GlennBecksATool # Aaronak # Weston Esterhazy While these fine folks will be able to revert any vandalism, they cannot block the morans doing it, so we admins will still have the pleasure of banning them. Also, in addition to receiving rollback superpowers these non-sysops were given the userbox called "WAtp" which stands for "Truthiness Protector!" So, if you see anyone else doing outstanding work (including User:Aaronak, who hasn't been given them yet) please make sure you give them the userbox. Thank you,--WatchTVEatDonutDrinkBeer 17:56, 29 April 2007 (UTC) Something New? I would like to know what everybody thinks of this new idea I came up with: changing categories listed on the front page? Maybe if we changed that every once it would be just one more thing that gets updated/changed on the front page. Anyone have any comments on this?--WatchTVEatDonutDrinkBeer 07:31, 28 April 2007 (UTC) :Great idea!--thisniss 13:00, 28 April 2007 (UTC) Other Wikis I had a guy on today who was posting a few pages (one of which had been deleted before) which I feel would work best on the wiki dedicated to his subject. Should we direct people to the wiki when/if when it happens again? I would like to hear what everyone else feels.--WatchTVEatDonutDrinkBeer 21:32, 27 April 2007 (UTC) Idea How about a "Science Friday" type feature where we run pieces on special "science"-related topics. One idea I had would be a "debate" format - maybe between the factinista Professor Actual Factual and Stephen's protege The Professor? Or we could have different "celebrities" explain scientific phenomena - like how best to view a solar eclipse or something? Maybe we could do one of these a month, or every other week, and then if it catches on or if we like writing them, we can do more? --thisniss 18:36, 26 April 2007 (UTC) Number of Pages We've been getting approximately 100 pages a week, so 6,000 is easily within our reach by the end of this week. However, the end of school is coming, people will be going on vacation...and, Independence Day is 10 weeks away. What do you guys say we try for 7,000 pages by then? Huh, huh!? We have a new category in jobs, that I feel is a wealth of untapped truthiness...can anyone else feel of any other category of articles that could use to boost our page count? Any input (up to and including how bad an idea this is) is welcome.--WatchTVEatDonutDrinkBeer 02:10, 26 April 2007 (UTC) * new category suggestion: inventions--WatchTVEatDonutDrinkBeer 02:42, 26 April 2007 (UTC) * pages to fill-in: GlenBecksATool's congressional committees.--WatchTVEatDonutDrinkBeer 03:24, 26 April 2007 (UTC) * We could do a page for each POTUS Ace-o-aces 17:07, 26 April 2007 (UTC) :Yes, we should definitely do this! We've got several, not all of them properly identified as such. But I believe that any online truthopedia worthy of the title should have a page for each President - even that bastard Pierce.--thisniss 17:53, 26 April 2007 (UTC) *another category: Geology? Mountains, rivers, volcanoes, all explained as the special parts of God's Creation. Anyone? Class? Class?--WatchTVEatDonutDrinkBeer 04:28, 1 May 2007 (UTC) ::Heavenly host, Saints, Important figures from the Bible. We are sadly lacking in all of these. I mean, I wanted to make a reference to how totally not gay St. Francis was (not), and there wasn't even a St. Francis page. The founder of San Francisco! - Oh, but there is now, because I made it. But still, most of the Apostles, Disciples, and such don't have pages. And they're such good subjects, especially the ones who got stoned. ::I also feel we should really push to get all Representatives, Senators, and Cabinet members pages made soon. Anyone who has already declared for 2008 races should have a page. Ideally, we should have a page for every state Governor (there are 50, I believe?). Oh, and I plan to do more Report Books Book Reports once the summer roles round (I've red linked the ones I believe I can do fairly quickly, but feel free to grab them sooner if you want). If we can get people doing these on a regular basis, that could generate pages and also maybe appeal to a different group of writers? I don't know how we get it rolling, though. That's all I gots for now. --thisniss 06:11, 1 May 2007 (UTC) 6,000 Today --WatchTVEatDonutDrinkBeer 05:17, 27 April 2007 (UTC) :w00t! --uno 04:24, 2 May 2007 (UTC) Look Who's Honoring Us Now! Woo, hoo! We got top of the page! Bartcop issue 1968 Yeah!--WatchTVEatDonutDrinkBeer 23:15, 25 April 2007 (UTC) :Congrats! That is one ugly pic, Watch. I bow to you. --thisniss 05:28, 26 April 2007 (UTC) New Pro-American British Category I just made a series of new templates for British (proambrit, proambritf, proambritg, proambritm). The origional british template put the article in the un-american category. This doesn't make sense for some articles (like Tony Blair or the very truthy John Derbyshire). I didn't get rid of the old templates, we can just use either one as needed. Ace-o-aces 16:11, 25 April 2007 (UTC) :This makes sense to me. I'm going to get back to my template/category metacategorization soon (once my end o' semester crunch passes, at the latest). In the meantime, please feel free to weigh in, make suggestions, add, change, etc. - I've been making notes at the Talk:Template page. I haven't updated it for a while, but it would be cool if people could add new templates to the list there, too. My long-term goal is to make the categories and templates more "groupable" (or "gropable"?) so that everyone can find and use them more easily. Thanks! --thisniss 17:04, 25 April 2007 (UTC) Better Know A District Last BKAD was 03-21-2007. WTF?--WatchTVEatDonutDrinkBeer 18:02, 24 April 2007 (UTC) :Blame It On The Rahm. --thisniss 19:17, 24 April 2007 (UTC) Check Emails! There may be emails about upcoming "secret plans"! Please check your emails so you can be in on our next plot!--WatchTVEatDonutDrinkBeer 00:54, 24 April 2007 (UTC) Mission Accomplished! Alchemist Media. We are daring! USA! USA! USA! --MC Esteban™ 02:46, 21 April 2007 (UTC) New Category To address a number of pages that are not "getting it", I have created a template to mark pages that "worship dieties not recognized by Stephen". I have called it "nocows" based on the idea that in satire, there really shouldn't be sacred cows.--WatchTVEatDonutDrinkBeer 21:02, 19 April 2007 (UTC) New Template, Category! Watching the news tonight, someone did a story on Air Traffic Controllers and how they are not getting enough sleep! In their honor, I created a page, a tag and a cat: job! Please fix/change as your gut feels necessary!--WatchTVEatDonutDrinkBeer 06:40, 14 April 2007 (UTC) :Also, it can be used for pages that are one step below "flog".--WatchTVEatDonutDrinkBeer 00:56, 24 April 2007 (UTC) Weird Stat of the Day If I am reading this chart correctly, then sometime in April, we apparently reached the one million words mark. --thisniss 15:54, 12 April 2007 (UTC) Jeebus! How do you read that chart? It looks like something a manic statistician wrote after smoking crack! Ace-o-aces 19:39, 12 April 2007 (UTC) To Do List, and Features Discussion Because we have such a wonderful crop of new users who seem intent on helping us (what's that about?), I thought it might be cool to have a page like this and our "Wikiality Weekends" where we could keep track of projects. So I revamped the Wikiality:ToDo page as a community-wide "to do list." I tried to indicate the difference between that page (a list for projects & stuff that needs doing) and "Current Events" - if they start getting confused we can get more specific. I love the fact that we can expand our "to do" beyond the admins. Wow. Also, a reminder (I put it on the "To Do," so I'm thinking about it): If you haven't yet, please add your thoughts to the Discussion about Features protocol. I feel the suggestion of locking Features for 30 days, and then creating an "archive" version before re-opening to editing is a good one, but we should try to get some consensus and move on this so that users don't feel like we're not paying attention. Thanks in advance for your attention to this question. --thisniss 17:20, 9 April 2007 (UTC) Interesting Question One of our citizens asked a very interesting question on the talkpage for the Main Page, I copied it below, does anyone know what to do about it?--WatchTVEatDonutDrinkBeer 00:22, 7 April 2007 (UTC) To www or not to www I noticed that Wikiality is using both http://wikiality.com/Main_Page and http://www.wikiality.com/Main_Page as domain name. Furthermore, google are crawling both with the www and without the www as if they are two separate sites. This may be a disadvantage to us because Google give out duplication penalty for identical content being hosted on two "different" sites. (PS: A day will come when articles from The Truthiness Encyclopedia will rank higher than articles from The Free Encyclopedia!) -- Princess Ai 00:17, 7 April 2007 (UTC) :Are you sure this is disadvantageous to us in the long run? I thought that most internets sites did this because it helped in searching. (in fact, many big sites - like the above mentioned unmentionable encyclopedia - are listed in .com, .org, etc. versions as well) But I don't really know anything about how the Googles tubes work. I do know that when I do the Quantcast thing, whether I type the www. or not, I get the same "Wikiality.com" stats. (oh, and on another note, we are now the #7 listing on the Google under "truthiness;" #1 and #2 under "Wikiality" - an improvement, as we weren't always in the top ten for either of these terms, right?) ::Speaking of the Google, I just found this (my vanity lead me to google "Virginality"): someone's blog. Rock on!!! See, I felt I was an expert on virginality, and this clearly proves that I was right. (I am laughing so hard, it hurts) --thisniss 01:44, 7 April 2007 (UTC) New Bureaucrats User:Esteban Colberto and User:Thisniss have been promoted to bureaucrats! Congratulations, heroes!--WatchTVEatDonutDrinkBeer 04:26, 6 April 2007 (UTC) Looks Who's Honoring Use Now! Check out Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals and scroll down to the third question!--WatchTVEatDonutDrinkBeer 00:53, 7 April 2007 (UTC) Dictionary Update We are quickly approaching 1,000 dictionary entries !--WatchTVEatDonutDrinkBeer 05:25, 5 April 2007 (UTC) :Don't know exactly when it happened, but I just checked at we are at 1,013 entries in our dictionary! Congratulations us!--WatchTVEatDonutDrinkBeer 05:01, 26 April 2007 (UTC) User Awards I have been giving out "awards" for users who have achieved certain levels here on Wikiality.com (please adjust and add your own--WatchTVEatDonutDrinkBeer 23:56, 21 February 2007 (UTC)): : So, should we give people balls for achieving a certain status? Also, I want to award something to people who vote an x number of times. Any suggestions? --Esteban Colberto 21:07, 23 February 2007 (UTC) ::The voting system was designed to prevent users who vote but don't contribute anything else (their votes are not counted) if we do award "voting" it must be done inconjunction with contributions too.--WatchTVEatDonutDrinkBeer 22:27, 23 February 2007 (UTC) I would also like to know about (or work up some) protocols for the process of giving out user awards. The particular case that brought this to mind was User:GlennBecksATool, whom I believe deserves a nod for a number of recent truthy contributions. I feel that he is beyond the "Monkey In Training" stage, and wondered if he could be "awarded" with the "Editor Par Excellence" or "It-Getter" badges? How should I (or "someone") handle something like this? Should we route "awarding" suggestions through MC Esteban, or some more "public" discussion? Or can I just award a user for extra-truthy contributions on my own gut-judgment?--thisniss 01:35, 24 February 2007 (UTC) ::I added Monkey into the chart, but it has been something I started handing out, just as Esteban has been handing out balls. I think for an "unofficial" award (for a user who you catch being good), you can just give them the award. But for something official (like Featured article, writer, image, etc), it has to go through the MC. ::I created the 2 categories you mentioned for people who can edit any page to truthiness' highest standards. And turn a page around, kinda like El did from day one. BUt, whatever you choose, make sure you post it into the chart, so we don't contradict anything you do.--WatchTVEatDonutDrinkBeer 01:57, 24 February 2007 (UTC) :::**"Mrs. Colbert" question/thought: Are we going to use this same title for writers of "Wikiality.com Featured Word"s? It just occurred to me that if we do want to differentiate them, we could call the "Word" writers something like "Junior Miss Colbert"s. (or even "Junior Mrs. Colbert" - even weirder) ::::Well, I was awarding the WAWord badge to those who have written a Featured Word. Do we need a title as well? Also, re: the voting+contribs thing, sounds good. If we see a vote from a user without contribs, we will politely ask them to contribute first before voting, not that this seems to happen very often. ::Esteban has made a page for this: Wikiality:Awards--WatchTVEatDonutDrinkBeer 04:22, 28 February 2007 (UTC) Praise and constructive criticisms around the web. http://www.ttca.org/cruisenews/2006/12/show-your-truthiness-edit-wikialitycom.shtml Lots of great criticisms of the site as well as praise. http://www.thetelegram.com/index.cfm?sid=821&sc=5 Another mention of the greatness of our site. --uno 19:40, 30 December 2006 (UTC) Should we have a "Look Who's Honoring US" section now? --uno 21:35, 6 January 2007 (UTC) :yes!--Esteban Colberto 23:21, 6 January 2007 (UTC) http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/16370487.htm A nice mention. --uno 00:42, 26 January 2007 (UTC) Truthiness banished! See http://www.lssu.edu/banished/ and the list itself at http://www.lssu.edu/banished/current.php --Splarka (talk) 05:34, 2 January 2007 (UTC) :Good. Whenever something is taboo, the kids go for it that much more--WatchTVEatDonutDrinkBeer 05:36, 2 January 2007 (UTC) food pages I've noticed the various food pages are staring to look too uncylopediaish. We need to truthify them. Also, I believe this post constitutes both the first and second use of the word uncyclopediaish in the English language. Ace-o-aces 01:01, 15 January 2007 (UTC) :In addition to the Menu category, there is the new "job" category and I have added a bunch of "blank" pages (sections only, to be filled in) for a bunch of corporations. I was thinking of adding those 3 categories (food, jobs, corps) to the "American club" so people can work on them when they are just looking for something to play with. :Anyone have any suggestions?--WatchTVEatDonutDrinkBeer 22:21, 21 April 2007 (UTC) Great link with a lot of cool info... Wiki How John Derbyshire I'd like if people could help contribute to Mr. Derbyshire's theoretical acts of bravery. Ace-o-aces 02:14, 20 April 2007 (UTC) :Maybe one way to add stuff is to make like Derbyshire is undoing the damage caused by the Clenis.--WatchTVEatDonutDrinkBeer 22:18, 21 April 2007 (UTC)